Big software companies in China have adopted a new weapon of fighting pirating for software makers and have lowered the prices yielding encouraging results so far. The legal and political outfit was previously used to fight this vice.

It was reported during an executives meeting that since the lowering of prices by Microsoft Corp., Autodesk Inc and other software companies that the sales units have increased. Simon Leung, Greater china Microsoft’s chief concurred as shown with their April sales.

Patrick Williams, Asia-Pacific region Autodesk’s senior vice president, said that since the reduction of the prices the previous year, they had seen a double increase in sales to an estimate of 300,000 from July for the sale of AutoCAD and other software designs made by Autodesk.

From $3,975 the U.S states that one can get AutoCAD 2011 software. The prices in China for the U.S company’s prices are lower from 20% to 30% before the reduction done the previous year.

Many China’s software industries had to go through big change to because as much as it may seem that lowering prices could attract customers was not obvious to many.

With China characterized with average income earners, they still kept their prices at close levels with those in the US as they saw no point in competing with the one or two dollar pirated versions. However, they realized that relying on the legal force was not bearing fruits and there were consumers who were willing to pay the right price for legitimate products. The latest version of windows 7 Home basic, which is the latest stand-alone operating system, was sold for less than a third of its starting price in the U.S of $199.99 as opposed to $59 or 399 Yuan.

Though lowering the prices does not phase out the problem, it helps discourage piracy, said the Greater china’s chief executive Simon. On the brighter side it has boosted the sales in china for sure. He added that margins were squeezed by the lowering of the process but would make it up with the volumes.

Other foreign base companies like General Motors Corp. ,Nissan Motor Co. Nokia corp. were targeting Chinese clients who could afford a car and phone respectively by designing cheaper and smaller models for new buyers.

Ni Guangnan of Chinese Academy of Engineering thought it is reasonable for Microsoft to adjust the prices according to the different countries. Microsoft caught up with some violators by introducing updates of Windows XP, which when used turned the screen of offenders black if using Illegitimate or pirating software.
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